The Blockade At An End

Proclamation by the President.

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The text of the President’s proclamation declaring an end of the blockade of certain ports is as follows:

By the President of the United States of America:

A PROCLAMATION.

WHEREAS.  By my proclamation of the 19th of April, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, it was declared that the ports of certain States, including those of Beaufort, in the State of North Carolina, Port Royal in the State of South Carolina, and New Orleans in the State of Louisiana, were for reasons therein set forth, intended to be placed under blockade; and whereas the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal and New Orleans have been blockaded; but as the blockade of the same ports may now be safely relaxed with advantage to the interests of commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifth section of the act of Congress, approved on the 13th of June last, entitled “An act further to provide for the collection of duties of imports, and for other purposes,” do hereby declare that the blockade of the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal and New Orleans, shall so far cease and determine, from and after the first day of June next, that commercial intercourse with these ports, except as to persons and things and information contraband of war, may, from that time be carried on, subject to the laws of the United States, and to the limitations and in pursuance of the regulations which are prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury in his order of this date, which is appended to this proclamation.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this twelfth day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-sixth.

{L. S.}

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President:

WM. H. SEWARD, Sec’y of State.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, May 17, 1862, p. 1